By the Last Stage of Lycanthropy
by Katta
Summary: Remus asks Sirius for a few last favours.


Sirius stood at the door for a full minute before he could bring himself to knock. In his left hand he still held Remus' letter in a desperate grip. He didn't want to admit it, but he was worried. It seemed forever before Remus finally opened the door. Sirius froze.  
  
"I'm glad you came," Remus said in a low voice and then turned back inside, giving Sirius a moment to get his face together.  
  
He looked bloody awful. Even Sirius, wanting so much to deny the truth, could see that although Remus had been let out of Mungo's after that bout of pneumonia, he was far from well. In fact, he looked perpetually stuck in the first stage of transformation, with fur-like hair growing on his hands and his teeth and nails grown to fangs and thick claws.  
  
With a heavy heart Sirius followed Remus into the living room where books were stacked up all over the table and the floor. The bookshelves were nearly empty.  
  
"A little late for spring cleaning, isn't it?" Sirius tried to joke, banishing the fear that threatened to take over at any minute.  
  
"I'm sorting out the books," Remus said, returning to the bookshelves, picking out some of the books that were left, putting them in different piles. His voice had a slight lisp to it from the fangs he had not quite gotten used to. "I sold the most valuable ones a long time ago of course, but even cheap books are important, and I want to make sure the right people get the right ones." He looked at the book in hand and smiled, tossing it over to Sirius. "This one is definitely for you."  
  
Sirius looked at the title. *Dogsbody*. "Funny."  
  
"It's about a bloke called Sirius who gets turned into a dog. I thought you might be able to relate. It's written by a very talented Muggle who has gotten dangerously close to the truth in some of her books..." He sighed. "Sometimes I think I prefer her world to the real one."  
  
"Remus..." Sirius didn't know what to say, didn't want to hear the answers to his questions. "Are you all right?"  
  
Remus turned his attention back to the books, putting them on top of the various stacks. His movements were painfully slow. "I'm forty-three. For someone turned during childhood that's a bleeding record."  
  
"So you beat the odds." Sirius desperately tried to hang on to something. "That's a good thing. No need for the gloom."  
  
Without a word Remus held up his hand with spread fingers, displaying the fur and claws in the light from the window.  
  
"A bit worse for wear," Sirius admitted, "but you can still live for years to come. They cured the pneumonia, didn't they?"  
  
Remus laughed. It was a long and relieving laugh, shaking his body and causing his eyes to tear. Then he shook his head, still smiling, although the tears in his eyes became even more evident. "Oh, Sirius, you really haven't changed. Yes, they cured the pneumonia. But my heart is working overtime, my kidneys gave in a month ago, and I have a tumour in my liver the size of a golf ball. The only reason I'm still alive at all is because they have enchanted me with every spell they could think of."  
  
There was a long silence before Sirius found his voice. It sounded strange to his own ears, shaky and hoarse. "How long?"  
  
"With the spells, two or three months. But that isn't what I have in mind. That's why I owled you. I need your help. And I need you not to pretend you can solve this. There's no spell you can dig up from some obscure book this time. We tried that thirty years ago," his face softened, "and I've been grateful for the result. But this time it's for real, and I want you here with me. I know it's a lot to ask..." His voice trailed off.  
  
Sirius looked at his old friend, the tired lines in his face, and remembered a time when those lines hadn't been there. It had all gone too fast. Twelve years lost in prison, and so he wasn't prepared for this. He should have been. A lot to ask? Certainly. But no more than had been asked of the little boy who had once been bitten by a werewolf.  
  
"What is it you want me to do?" he asked. It seemed to be the only sensible thing left for him to say.  
  
Remus met his gaze with incredibly calm eyes. "Two things, really. The first is to make sure that all my things go to the people they're intended for - and I'd really appreciate it if you brought Procyon his things personally."  
  
Sirius's face darkened. He didn't want to say no to anything Remus asked of him at this time, but he wasn't too keen on showing up on Procyon's door step either. Not after last time.  
  
"He kicked me out of his house."  
  
"He won't this time," Remus said, gentle as ever but with that hardheaded stubbornness right below the surface.  
  
"You mean not since I got my name cleared." Sirius didn't want to fight, it was the last thing he wanted, but he couldn't help himself.  
  
"We all thought you were guilty," Remus reminded him in a low voice. "I thought you were guilty. You have forgiven me."  
  
"It's not the same."  
  
Those eyes wouldn't leave him, and finally he sighed. "It isn't. You've always had a hard time believing in people, and... I guess I can understand why, even though I don't like it. But Procyon has known me all my *life*. The only reason he didn't believe I was innocent was because he didn't want to believe it. He's a bastard, and that's all there is to it."  
  
Remus held his gaze for a long time and then nodded thoughtfully, going to one of the stacks to pick up a book. "I was going to give this to Harry," he said, browsing through the pages. "But I think you need it more than he does."  
  
Sirius looked down on the page Remus had opened for him. This wasn't a dangerous book of spells where every change meant potential disaster. It was a completely ordinary Muggle novel, and so Remus had put spells of notice on it to draw the reader's attention to the best parts. Sirius's eyes fell on the following: *If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?* Closing the book, he checked its author and title. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, *The Gulag Archipelago*. One of those Russian books he had always refused to read.  
  
"You're a born pessimist, do you know that?"  
  
"Well, if I was born one it makes sense that I would die one," Remus said with a smile that faded as he spoke. "Which brings me to the second favour I need of you."  
  
His next pause was so long that Sirius began to wonder if he was supposed to reply, but Remus's expression warned him not to.  
  
"I have gotten two potions from Severus Snape," Remus continued, still calm. "One of them is a morpheic potion, guaranteed to put me to sleep for at least a week. The other is a cleansing potion that will rid my body of all magical influence. Once they have started to work it will all be over within a few days."  
  
Sirius stared at him, refusing to understand what he was told. Remus wanted to kill himself? But that just wasn't possible. Not Remus, not someone who had survived so much already. Not his only friend left from the old days.  
  
"You're not actually going to..." Sirius could hardly get the words out, his throat all choked up as if someone had shoved cotton into it. "You could have those few months!" he pleaded. "Wouldn't that be better?"  
  
"No. It wouldn't be." Remus didn't seem too keen on talking, but he went on nevertheless. "Do you remember the new moons?"  
  
Sirius smiled. He didn't need to ask what Remus was talking about. Of course he remembered the new moons. It was the times when Remus came up with pranks so glorious that only one of them would have taked the other Marauders a lifetime to get right, or performed stunts so dangerous it was a miracle he hadn't ended up at Madam Pomfrey's more often than he had. During a new moon, his friends had been forced to work overtime to keep up with him, and during an eclipse it had been downright impossible. The only time Sirius had even been close to acting like Remus during an eclipse had been when he had eaten a party bag of Bertie Bott's Beans on a dare and been on a sugar high for the next six days.  
  
"I think I can safely say 'yes' to that," he replied with the smallest of smiles, even though he felt like crying.  
  
"They don't make any difference anymore," Remus said in a low voice, his calm expression cracked by a grimace that was soon followed by tears. Although he turned away trying to conceal it Sirius knew better than to let Remus play turtle this time, and so he wrapped his arms around him, saying the words he was sure he was going to regret:  
  
"Okay. Whatever you want, it's okay."  
  
"I'm so tired..."  
  
Remus sounded like a ten-year-old boy, and Sirius thought with wry humour that it was oddly fitting, considering that he'd sounded like a man of forty when he *was* a ten-year-old boy.  
  
"What do you want me to do?" Sirius forced himself to be the calm one now that Remus obviously couldn't be anymore.  
  
"I want you to stay until it's all over," Remus said in a futile attempt to pull himself together. "And if you would arrange for the funeral, I'd be grateful."  
  
"Of course." Sirius led Remus to the sofa, sitting down by his side. "And you're sure about this?"  
  
Remus nodded, smiling again. "It's my time. To tell you the truth, I'm not afraid. Whatever is on the other side, it's bound to be better than this."  
  
Sirius smiled, although his heart sank. The world would be an awfully empty place without Remus in it. "Well, I'll be there to the end."  
  
**********  
  
Sirius wasn't certain if the blue potion was the cleansing one and the purple one the morpheic one, but since Remus drank them both straight after each other it didn't matter much. Five minutes later, he was falling asleep. For the first two hours Sirius just sat there, grateful to see there was no pain on his friend's face. But he couldn't sit for the days this would last just watching Remus sleep, and so he got a few of the books from the heap meant for him, as well as one from McGonagall's heap. He was sure Remus wouldn't mind if it was read one more time before being handed to its new owner, and he was going to read those passages he had always skimmed through or skipped entirely when they were younger.  
  
*The initial circles of behaviour, that bear a superficial resemblance to manic-depressive activity, will eventually stabilise. By the last stage of lycanthropy even the cycles of transformation will be disrupted, causing lupine traits to manifest at any point of the lunar cycle. The lycanthropy will prove an increasing strain on the victim's body, eventually leading to corporeal decay and vulnerability to infections. Although most werewolves still die from violent causes, natural deaths have proven to be more often caused by secondary diseases than the lycanthropy itself..*  
  
Sirius put the book down. He couldn't stand it any more. He just prayed Snape had been honest and that there would be no pain. Unable to stand just sitting around he took another book, the one Remus had jokingly said he might relate to. He opened it randomly and found the glowing letters of another noticing spell. *Being a child of earth means more than you think.* Smiling, he started from the beginning. This sounded promising.  
  
**********  
  
Within three days Remus's breaths became laboured, and on day four they stopped completely. Sirius waited until the uneven pulse had stopped as well and then prepared the body for the funeral, lovingly crossing Remus's arms over his chest and closing his eyes and mouth with the traditional chant. The last struggle had caused Remus to morph in and out of wolf shape and at his moment of death he had been caught in between, his face half like a snout and his hands like paws. Some would have thought it a hideous sight. Sirius simply dressed Remus in his finest set of robes, that were rather shabby despite that, and started spinning the customary crystal cocoon wizards used instead of coffins. He considered shading it purple to protect his friend from cruel gazes, but decided against it. Let the surface stay clear. If people wanted to stare that was their problem. Remus had nothing to hide. He had fought a battle as difficult as the wizarding world's battle against Voldemort's Death Eaters, and if he had ultimately lost, that didn't make his heroism any smaller.  
  
He owled Dumbledore and then took to cleaning up the house, putting the last few things in boxes to be sold. Remus had taken care of most of it already, and when Sirius finally sat down in the living room he wished there had been more things for him to do. More pointless, physical and wizarding tasks to prevent him from thinking and feeling, because that was one thing he did *not* want to do.  
  
He'd managed through James's death and Peter's betrayal. He'd managed through twelve years in Azkaban. He'd even bloody managed through the last battle against Voldemort. But there was more to this than the death of a friend. It was the death of their entire generation. Apart from that git Snape, there was no one left who had gone to school with him. He wasn't only the last Marauder, it felt as if he was the last of everything. The rest had been sacrificed on the altar of good and evil, one way or another. If they weren't dead, they were involved with works and leisures that meant nothing to him.  
  
None of the old school mates were left. But there was a drop-out, as Remus had reminded him. He was a stuck-up brat that had been sent to every wizarding school in the world and finally ended up in Germany, making tree castles and bird parades "to make up for those Muggle highways". He bragged and was condescending to everyone around him, even the highbrows that found him degenerate.  
  
Sirius rose from his chair and picked up Procyon's pile. The funeral wouldn't be for another few days. He had time for a quick trip to Berlin.  
  
**********  
  
He apparated to the wrong place and walked down several streets before he found Orionstrasse. He knew Procyon was a boarder in someone else's house but was still surprised to see an elderly woman with a surly face open the door.  
  
"Guten Tag," he said, trying to remember some of the German he had learned such a very long time ago. "Ich will mit Procyon Black... gesprochen, bitte."  
  
The woman said something very long with a verb on the end. She must have seen that it meant nothing to him because she held up a hand, said "Moment", and returned inside. Sirius waited.  
  
A few minutes later a tall, middle-aged man came down the stairs. His dark hair was shorter than Sirius's and had no streaks of grey, but the sharp eyes were similar.  
  
"Sirius!" Although he was clearly surprised there was none of the hostility in his voice that had been so evident the last time. "What brings you here?"  
  
"Remus is dead," Sirius said flatly, handing Procyon the pack of books. They had never been able to get along, even before Azkaban, but now he found himself oddly nervous at the thought that the door may close in his face.  
  
Procyon took the pack and watched his brother for a long time. Finally, he held open the door.  
  
"Why don't you come on in?"  
  
**********  
  
THE END


End file.
